How To Dress Well – Care

This is a sex-positive, consent-pop song about BOTH wet, physical, aggressive sex and tender care. Our culture tends to tell us that these things can’t exist in the same moment, but i don’t buy that.

SALT SONG

I had a dream that I was an old man with long white hair and I walked into a mansion, which was empty, but not abandoned—just spare. I entered a room and found a 3 year old boy on the floor. I realized immediately it was me as a toddler! He was sitting in a pile of flowers, just gently playing with the petals. I introduced myself to him and he was so sweet, but also was saying the most profound shit to me—very sagely things, insights about life and love and care. When i woke up i realized my entire goal as a person and specifically as an artist is to honor this boy in this dream.

WHAT’S UP

They don’t want us to be positive. They don’t want us to connect joy with truth because that’s a revolutionary combination.

LOST YOUTH / LOST YOU

This song is about disillusion and heartbreak.

THE RUINS

When I was a child a family friend died in a plane crash and I remember realizing, while everyone sat around and watched the news, that the world was dangerous. I felt the complete disorientation of the world falling out of place for the first time.

BURNING UP

This is a country-inflected love song. It’s about wanting to give care to someone who is resisting care.

I WAS TERRIBLE

I made this song after listening to David Mahler’s ‚only music can save me now’— it’s a pop-punk odyssey about the possibility of redemption through romance.

ANXIOUS

This is maybe the most experimental and adventurous song on the record— an attempt to take explosively psychoanalytical-philosophical lyrics about anxiety in this digital century and combine them, formally, with the most naive and happy pop— pop that just demands that you be happy no matter how you really feel. I did this because this is what life feels like to me, the way i fit into life in this century. It’s a wild combination.

TIME WAS MEANT TO STAY

This song is about an instance where i just completely failed to care for my friend. I wanted to redeem myself through this song.

MADE A LIFETIME

This song is a really special thing for me: When I listen to it I can hear and feel my face when I was recording it. The moment that I sing “I’ll always be indebted to how warm skin is,“ I can feel a smile on my face. It’s a very special experience for me as an artist.

THEY’LL TAKE EVERYTHING YOU HAVE

This is a protest song. We live under conditions— contemporary neoliberal capitalism, the debt economy and the rabid anti-sympathy that attends this that make care extremely difficult, if not often impossible. The courage in the post-rock section is desperate, but i am desperate to resist this and find love and joy and care in this life.